


Goblin Cat

by beachbby



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Cat AU, Gen, like an actual cat, not catboys
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-19
Updated: 2019-10-19
Packaged: 2020-12-24 10:55:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,107
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21098324
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/beachbby/pseuds/beachbby
Summary: Shiro’s ugly little pointy-faced pet black cat is named Keith and Lance hates it.





	Goblin Cat

Lance had no idea why a raggedy looking black cat was always trailing behind Shiro whenever he saw him walking throughout the Garrison hallways. No one else seemed to care much about it and Lance was beginning to think that he was just hallucinating the cat. It felt like he was the only one that was actually confused by it.

He’d brought it up to Hunk once, just to make sure that he wasn’t going insane, and ended up even more confused than before. 

“Oh, Keith! He’s a good cat. I think he’s still a little feral? I asked Shirogane about it a while ago and apparently he picked the cat up from the streets.” Lance didn’t know whether to feel relieved that he wasn’t making this cat up or to be horrified that Shiro, his idol, was one of the weirdos that gave their pets real human names. 

Ever since Veronica had that hamster that she’d named “Frank” Lance had absolutely despised the fact that some people felt that it was okay to give animals human names. 

Anyway, after a year of seeing the cat out of the corner of his eyes and wanting to slam his head into the walls over the logistics of a cat just living at a military base, it all came to a head. He’d finally managed to track Shiro down when the guy wasn’t being mobbed by his adoring fans (Lance knew he qualified as one of them, shut up) and all he wanted to do was ask him a few questions. 

Keith the cat was draped across Shiro’s shoulders though, a single gray eye cracked open as his tail flicked around absently, and Lance was more distracted than not. 

He trailed off halfway through one of his questions, a short “uh-“ leaving him and Shiro smiled, reaching a hand up to scratch at Keith’s ears. 

“He likes staring a lot, don’t worry about it. He’s friendlier than he looks.” 

Lance really doubted that, considering Keith’s body was scarred to a point where it looked like the cat had a hobby of throwing himself at other animals. Well, with how the cat was leaning into Shiro’s hand and looking completely at ease while doing so, he couldn’t have been that bad. 

“Can I-?” Lance started, reaching his own hand up towards where Keith was laying. Both the cat’s eyes opened, widening as the pupils contracted and Lance startled, yelping when his knuckles got a row of red-hot lines scored across them. Keith hissed, his black fur rising around his shoulders and Shiro let out a sharp noise, pulling the cat off his shoulders and relocating him to his arms. 

“I’m so sorry!” Shiro apologized, sounding almost frantic and Lance could only look at the way Keith mashed his pointy little cat face into the crook of Shiro’s arm. “Did he get you badly? Do you need to go to the infirmary?” 

It didn’t hurt that badly, just stung like a motherfucker and Lance couldn’t help but feel slighted that the first real show of interest that Shiro had in him was because his feral cat felt the need to scratch him. 

He ended up waving the guy away and having to make a tactical retreat to save the last dredges of his pride. 

Cats were the worst. Why couldn’t Shiro have picked up a nice little dog? 

-

Hunk was definitely a dog person. Not that he hated cats! Cats were so cute and small but Hunk liked being able to play and cuddle with animals without feeling like he could break them. Cats were kinda, uh, twiggy. 

He figured that Lance shared this sentiment, but ever since Keith scratched him that one time, his friend seemed to have a vendetta towards all cats. Hunk knew that he’d gotten into at least four Twitter arguments about whether or not dogs were better than cats and seriously, it was getting a little bad. Veronica thought it was absolutely hilarious and encouraged Lance’s new, uh, eccentricities and Hunk just wanted to be able to tempt Keith with slivers of meat in peace. 

The cat was elusive, only seeming to appear with Shirogane in the general vicinity, so when he was quietly approached by the skittish animal one day he almost freaked out. 

He’d gone up to the roof of the Garrison to cool down and take a step back from everything, when the soft sounds of something padding across the concrete made him startle. 

Keith didn’t seem to notice his internal conflict because, well, he was a cat. The animal walked towards him, more tentative in his actions the closer he got, and Hunk held his breath. When the cat was up close like this and didn’t have Shirogane’s bright personality to hide behind, it looked pretty ragged. 

He was pretty sure the kink in his tail meant that it’d been broken at some point, but it hurt his heart to think about. 

Hunk held back from trying to pet it, knowing what’d happened to Lance, and set both his hands flat on the ground before looking back out across the desert. He let himself look back at where Keith had been a few minutes later and had to stifle an _”aww’_ when he saw that the cat had sat down next to him. Keith had taken to watching the vultures that circled around in the sky and when the animal turned to give him a short glance, Hunk startled and averted his eyes. 

More time passed, Hunk had no idea how long he’d actually been out here for, and when something cool, almost wet, gently touched his hand he had to use nearly all his self control to keep from jumping. He looked instead and felt a distinct burn in the backs of his eyes when he saw Keith gently sniffing at his fingers, tiny puffs of air fanning out across his fingertips as the cat got a nose-full. 

His fingers twitched without his permission and Keith shot up, startling away from his hand with a ferocity that had him gaping. 

He barely managed to get out a short “wait-“ before Keith disappeared behind one of the vents that sat atop the roof. 

Guilt welled up inside him and it was hard to not feel bad for startling the animal, especially when it reacted so intensely. Hunk had no idea how Shirogane had managed to get as close to Keith as he did, but he couldn’t help but admire the man even more now.

-

The cat was staring at him.

Matt stuck his tongue out at it and huffed out a short laugh when Keith’s head tilted sideways, like the little animal was trying to figure him out. 

Shiro’d asked him to watch Keith for a few hours while he went to a doctors appointment to test his eligibility for the Kerberos trip and Matt, well, Matt couldn’t’ve said no to that. 

Keith had flipped his shit for a good half hour after Shiro’d left him here and Matt had the scratches to show for it. Now though, the cat’d calmed down enough to watch him without feeling the need to hiss every time Matt moved. He wasn’t friendly by any means and Matt couldn’t really blame him, considering he probably thought that Shiro’d abandoned him or something. 

Keith clearly thought that he owned the Holt household, as he’d rapidly taken to kneading the utter shit out of the throw pillows that his mom had lovingly placed on the sofa and Matt could only be mildly amused about everything. Keith had be the grumpiest looking cat that he’d ever seen, which was made approximately four thousand times funnier due to the fact that the cat was teeny. Like, Matt was pretty sure Keith only weighed like seven pounds. 

He wasn’t really sure if Keith wasn’t fully grown yet or if he was just skinny and stunted from living on the street. 

“Hey Ma- whoa, is that a cat?” Katie’d walked into the living room and paused as soon as she noticed Keith, who’d stopped kneading the pillows to glare at her. 

“Cat-sitting for Shiro.” Matt explained, grinning as his sister moved closer to Keith, looking a little enthralled by the tiny angry thing. 

“You put the dog up, right?” She asked and he nodded, startling when she moved her hand towards Keith. 

“Hey, Katie, don’t touch him.” She gave him a confused look, retracting her hand away from the cat that’d started to bristle. He could see the question in her eyes and saved her the trouble of asking. “He’s a street cat, barely domestic enough to be in the house.” 

Keith stood up from where he’d been sitting down and hopped off the couch, moving to slip under one of their lower-lying chairs. Matt couldn’t help the amused huff that left him as he watched the cat hide. This had to be the first time that Katie had intimidated any living creature. 

“How does Shiro have him, then?” Katie asked, crossing her arms and looking a little hurt at the dismissal from the cat. 

Matt snorted, ignoring the low growling that Keith let out when he heard the sound. “Have you met Shiro? If anyone can tame a feral cat, it’s him.” 

Katie shrugged, agreeing easily. “How long are you cat-sitting for?” There was an edge of excitement in her voice and Matt had to put a stop to that immediately. Keith was silly and funny for a few hours but Matt wouldn’t be able to handle the cat for more than a day, max.

“Just a couple hours.” Katie slumped, looking put-out, and Matt went on. “You should totally see how crazy Keith goes whenever Shiro shows up though. It’s pretty funny.” 

Katie giggled, a hand moving up to half cover her mouth. “Who names their cat Keith?” And Matt snorted.

“I know right? I would’ve gone for Midnight, or like, Oreo.” 

Keith hissed from underneath the chair and the two of them giggled, Katie seemed especially tickled at the fact that it seemed like Keith didn’t like his name being made fun of. 

-

Shiro bought the red cat collar from the pet store around three weeks into knowing Keith. It took him eight months to be able to clip it on. 

“You look very handsome.” He said, having to repress the burning need to laugh because Keith looked so annoyed. The cat gave him a severely unamused look, one that Shiro hadn’t gotten for a few months, and he had to chuckle because the cat definitely knew what it was getting into when it let Shiro put the collar on. 

The silver name-plate dangled and Keith looked down at it, bringing a paw up to bat at the thing and Shiro snorted. 

Keith meowed, the sound was soft and airy and just the tiniest bit squeaky. Shiro might not be fluent in cat but he knew begging when he heard it. 

“Sorry buddy, I want you to be safe so you need to wear it, okay?” 

Keith meowed again, gently head butting Shiro’s arm in demand of head scratches and Shiro rolled his eyes before paying penance. He had to get everything prepped before going to Kerberos, after all. Iverson had caved after months of him begging to let Keith be a mouser in the storage units after he left for the trip, and Shiro didn’t want the cat to get hurt. 

He really would like someone to come home to after the trip, especially considering him and Adam had split up. 

Maybe he should’ve listened to Keith’s warnings when the cat had yowled at Adam whenever he’d tried to get closer to the animal.

He knew that people thought Keith was the worst cat that anyone could ask for, but the animal had such a capacity for affection that even Shiro found himself being surprised every now and again. Like right now, as he’d scratched the cat’s ears it’d moved onto his lap, curling into a circle as he continued with the gentle motions.

Keith started purring after a few minutes of it and Shiro smiled, soft and fond, at the gentle vibrations that made the small cat’s body shake. 

“Sorry about the collar,” he murmured and, as if the cat could understand his apology, Keith purred louder and nuzzled his head deeper into Shiro’s palm. 

He was really going to miss the cat in space. 

-

Okay, listen. Lance really didn’t like Keith the cat. The cat was rude, basically feral, and had a penchant for slashing people who just wanted to give it some _goddamn affection_. But even he felt a deep ache of sadness in his chest when he’d learned about what happened after Shiro left for Kerberos. 

Keith had apparently taken to lying in front of the last door in the final corridor he’d followed Shiro through, like he was waiting for the pilot to come back and damn it. That really did make him feel bad for the nasty little cat. 

Even with how sad it was, he’d forgotten about the whole situation until it smacked him upside the head. 

Him and Hunk had gotten a little lost, the bigger of the pair getting more and more anxious as they kept turning through similarly designed hallways and Lance was about to seriously start worrying until they turned one last corner and saw a small black lump sitting in front of one of the high security doors. He paused, the connection not really forming in his head until Hunk gasped a small “Keith?” and Lance gaped, instantly floored. 

Shiro’d gone off to Kerberos three _weeks_ ago. 

He looked up at Hunk and watched the other steel himself before starting towards the cat and Lance trailed after him, bewildered that Keith was still waiting by the door. There was a half empty food bowl next to the animal, as well as a bowl that’d been filled with water, so someone must’ve been taking care of it. 

Keith was unmoving as they drew closer and Lance felt a thrill of panic run through him at the idea of the cat having _died_ while waiting for Shiro. The little lump moved though, an irritated looking cat lifting its head to stare up at them and Lance sighed, relieved. 

“Hey, Keith,” Hunk said, gentle as he squatted closer to the floor and Lance tentatively followed his lead, not offering his hand because no thank you, he wasn’t in the mood to get scratched again. Hunk didn’t offer his hand either and Keith peered at them, not doing anything but stare. 

Lance was about to start feeling really awkward when Keith meowed, the sound of it was high-pitched and small and his jaw dropped again. He’d just figured that the only thing the cat knew how to do was hiss and growl but apparently he’d been wrong. Him and Hunk shared a look and when he looked back at Keith, the cat had straightened out of the lump it’d curled himself into, giving the two of them wary looks as its tail flicked around behind it. 

“What are we gonna do?” He whispered quietly to Hunk, who was busy staring at Keith like the cat’d grown a second head. 

Before Hunk could answer, Keith meowed again, sounding irritated at being ignored. Lance inhaled, ready to say some sort of unfunny joke that would break the heavy mood, but Keith stood up fully, cutting his words off. He blinked and watched the cat move to sit in front of the door, with its back facing it. Keith was straight-backed and firm and gave them a hell of a glare, like he was trying to tell them to fuck off. 

“Let’s just leave,” Hunk said weakly and Lance sighed before standing and following Hunk’s lead. The two of them were quiet as they tried to go back the way they came, the hallways looking no more different than they had before. Just when Lance was starting to get irritated at the winding hallways and the fact that they were completely lost, Hunk let out a sob that sounded as if it’d been punched out of him. Lance startled, looking up at his friend and swallowing hard when Hunk spoke, his voice wobbly. “He’s like Hachiko.” 

Fuck. Lance swallowed past the new lump in his throat, trying not to think about that movie. Who’s bright idea was it to show cadets a sad dog movie for movie night and not expect it to absolutely destroy them? Even James “I have a stick up my ass” Griffin had teared up near the end. Lance would’ve preferred Air Bud or shit, even Marley and Me. Not fucking Hachiko, especially considering they were getting front row seats to the live-action cat remake right now. 

“Shiro’s coming back in a few months.” Was all Lance could say. “He’s not like Hachiko.” 

-

Shiro wasn’t coming back. Shiro died on Kerberos and all the Galaxy Garrison could say was that it’d been “pilot error.” Of course Lance was sad for the other two pilots that’d died, he would’ve had to be cruel to not care about them. There was just something about Shiro, though, that was far more visceral. It was half the fact that Shiro was like, Lance’s hero, and half because Keith was still sitting by the high security door, none the wiser that his owner had died. 

There was just something in the air now, no one knew what to do about the whole cat situation. 

A few days after the announcement had come out, Hunk took him to where Keith had been standing guard for the months that Shiro’d been gone for. The cat’d still looked pissed off, like it always did, but there had been dozens of new cat toys strewn around it along with the dry kibble in its food bowl being replaced with the wet canned kind. 

Hunk had immediately burst into tears and it was a fucking trial for Lance not to do the same. 

Keith was unbothered. 

The cat probably had no idea why it was getting so much unwanted attention all of a sudden but there’d been no attacks by their resident Hachiko so the higher ups had just decided to let it go on. 

Until the Iverson situation. 

Lance’d only heard about it the day after it happened from his classmates, all of whom sounded stunned, if not furious. Apparently, from what he’d gathered, Iverson had tried to move Keith from his post and the cat had gone ballistic. Like, the whole nine yards. Keith had gone for the face and fucked up one of Iverson’s eyes to the point where vision loss was almost a guarantee, bitten the man’s hands until they’d bled, and basically destroyed his entire uniform before running off. 

Half his classmates were pissed off at the cat for being so violent and the other half were pissed off at Iverson for not leaving Keith alone. 

Honestly Lance just wanted to know where the fuck Keith went. Some of the people he’d spoken to saw Keith slip around the Garrison facilities, undetected after the Iverson situation, some others had seen Keith high tail it away from the entire building, and others swore by the fact that Keith disappeared into the desert like a phantom. 

Lance was pretty sure that Keith’d just booked it as far away from the Garrison as he could get. 

Ugh, whatever. Hopefully the cat was okay. Lance might not be its biggest fan but he didn’t want it to die out in the desert. 

-

His fingers absently traced the hard metal lines of his new arm, the pads of his fingertips barely touching the thick scar tissue that puckered around the upper edge of it, and his chest felt tight. 

A ragged gasp of a laugh left him and the only thing he could think about was how much he missed the gentle pressure of Keith curling up in his lap. 

-

Of all the things Lance’d expected to do tonight, saving Shiro from the Garrison with Hunk and Pidge was the last thing he’d anticipated. 

The fact that they hijacked a Garrison vehicle (with Pidge aggressively hunting down and ripping out any tracking devices he could find) seemed almost secondary to the fact that _Shiro was back._

Obviously they couldn’t fucking go back to the Garrison, Lance was distantly worried that they all were going to get arrested, so the fact that they found an abandoned shack when their stolen vehicle was barely chugging on empty was nothing short of divine intervention. 

Hunk, because he definitely qualified as some sort of demigod, managed to get the door open and Lance coughed past the disturbed dust to peek around the interior. 

When he saw a skinny little black cat with a red collar and angry eyes just sitting on the run down kitchen counter, he almost cried. This was too much, today was just too much. What was this shit? No way that was Keith, this was too fucking weird. 

“Keith-“ he started and Keith the cat hissed, his fur bristling and that was how Lance knew that it was him. 

A frantic laugh left him and he stiffened when Pidge sidled up next to him, gasping when he saw Keith too. “A cat?” Pidge asked and oh yeah, he hadn’t been around for when Shiro had left for Kerberos. Lance couldn’t bring himself to explain the entire backstory and Keith hissed again before jumping off the counter and running in between their legs, escaping towards the tiny ass living room. 

Lance turned, startling when Hunk laid an unconscious Shiro down on the sofa. He looked down at Keith, the cat having completely paused, and swallowed thickly when the cat meowed once, soft. 

Hunk gasped, the sound of it sharp, when he saw Keith and Lance let out a soft huff of a laugh when his friend brought his hands up to his mouth, covering it as he looked on with wet eyes. 

Keith meowed again, slowly starting towards Shiro, its tail swishing back and forth before meowing again, and again. The cat sniffed at Shiro’s leg that’d flopped off the sofa as it drew closer. Apparently something clicked because he let out a rush of rapid mewing, jumping onto the couch before clambering overtop Shiro, meowing the entire time. 

He was pretty sure that Hunk was crying and shit, his own eyes were watering. 

Keith had rapidly made his way towards Shiro’s head, giving it another tentative sniff before smashing his face into Shiro’s cheek, rubbing up against it. 

When Lance heard Keith purr for the first time, he had to choke back the sob that’d wanted to come out. 

Fuck, who knew the mean little cat had such a soft side? 

When Keith began licking the short buzzed side of Shiro’s hair, like he was grooming the man, Lance deflated, unable to do anything but sit on the dusty coffee table and try, desperately, to recharge. 

“Told you he wasn’t like Hachiko.” Was all he could say before he closed his eyes and rested his head in his hands. 

-

He woke up with a heavy weight on his chest. 

Blinking, he looked down and when he saw the tiny black lump that’d taken to using his chest as a bed, he didn’t even try to stifle his sob. He shifted, the cat immediately moving to sit up and meow directly in his face and he huffed out a laugh that was pretty much another sob. Shit, he was a mess. 

He brought up his (skin and bone) arm and gently rubbed at Keith’s thin ears, a wobbly smile crossing his face when the sensation was real and not imaginary. The motorboat purring that the little cat was letting out wasn’t anything but real and he had no idea how this was happening. 

Sitting up, he moved Keith into the crook of his arm as the cat rubbed up against him. A quick scan of the room let him know that this was Earth, considering there were other humans here, all of them dead asleep. 

_And they looked familiar, somehow. Were they part of the Garrison?_

Keith was still purring and rubbing his face over any part of him he could manage and Shiro felt something inside him shift. 

He sobbed, bringing a (metal) hand up to cover his mouth and petting Keith with the other one. 

Shiro was grateful that Keith had never cared about getting wet, because he got more than a few tears on the poor cat.

**Author's Note:**

> Keith's an actual literal feral street cat in this and I refuse to be cowed
> 
> I'm a big fan of aus like this fjgghgj thank you for reading!


End file.
